Most pioneers worked from dawn to dusk but Saturday was THE BIG DAY. They would work on Saturday morning (as even the V.F.L. players did and Jock McHale, famed Collingwood coach and a foreman at Carlton and United Breweries, once kept an opposition player late at work before a Grand Final involving his team and the Maggies.)
Saturday was the day for footy and feasting. The second activity occurred at the local dances. Not one man would dare admit that the only reason most of them attended the dances was to scoff down the entries in the COMPETITION! Every family had to bring a plate and while no wife or mother would admit it, there was a fair dinkum competition to surpass the culinary skills of all the other women.

Most footballers did pre-career training. Because of their workload and the lack of lighting, most bush footballers would have relied on their experience at State School up to Grade 8 (Merit Certificate.) The old cliche of four laps of the cricket pitch probably summed up any training that was done.

NEAR TULLAMARINE.
TULLAMARINE had a team in the late 1920's, according to Harry Heaps, who was a nuggety rover in the words of one of his team mates. In 1929 the Tullamarine school played the Keilor school at Keilor as a curtain raiser to the men's match.(Sunshine Advocate, 16-8-1929, page 7.) In the school match, all of Keilor's best players could equally well have been claimed as descendants of Tullamarine pioneers, the Fox, Wallace and Brown families living on the Tulla side of the Arundel bridge and David MilburnMcHALE, FOX, WALLACE, BROWN, DALLEY having leased "Fairfield" (400 acres north of Sharps Rd and west of Broadmeadows Rd) in 1868. The best of the Tullamarine boys were Dalley (Springbank or Mansfield's Triangle), Crotty (Broomfield), Reddan (Hillside), Parr (The Elms or Annandale).

In the men's game, one of Keilor's best was Graco, whose family had previously lived at Broadmeadows Township before the accident and was probably the grandfather of Essendon and Doutta Stars' Alan Graco. Tulla's best were Furphy (water cart family and relative of Bill Parr), Kelly, Reddan and Free. This was a competition match.
Tullamarine was playing against Coburg Amateurs, Campbellfield, Braybrook, Richmond United, Prestige, Keilor and Sth Brunswick. (Sunshine Advocate 19-7-1929, page 7.) The next year, these teams comprised the North Division of the Junior League with Sth Brunswick replaced by Moreland Amateurs and Richmond City in the South Division. Tullamarine's uniform was black and gold; were these colours later adopted by Broadmeadows and passed on to Westmeadows (the tigers)? Tullamarine probably did not have a team earlier because it lacked a ground. Then at the suggestion of Alec Rasmussen (foundation secretary of the Tullamarine Progress Association for 30 years until 1954 and much - loved teacher)the T.P.A. bought 6 acres that had belonged to drover, Noah Holland. (The reserve grew by another acre in recent decades when Handlon's block on the north west was added.)The Association donated this to council in late 1929. In 1931, most of the players must have gone to Broadmeadows.

The Keilor Football Club wikipedia states that the first match in Keilor was against a junior Essendon club in 1894. It goes on to say that Keilor was a founding member of the Keilor and Broadmeadows Association and won three premierships before joining the Essendon District Football League in 1930. Unless Keilor had two teams, it seems that the Keilor and Broadmeadows Football Association only lasted a few years, with 1928 probably its last season.

Broadmeadows and Bulla had a very old rivalry, playing annual games for many years from before 1893. The game in 1895 was typically rough according to the Bulla correspondent and a Bulla fellow, who had gone to West Australia for the gold rush, wrote home asking how many had been killed and how many injured. (Grace was listed as one of Broadmeadows' best players in this game but the name should be Graco; the accident had not yet happened.) Incidentally this chap was working with a Mr Burnside who was probably James Burnside of Deer Park. Bulla also played matches against Sunbury Seniors and Sunbury Juniors in 1894 and played the Sunbury F.C. in 1903 and 1905 (on the Asylum ground. In 1904 they played a game against the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works Employees Football Club. Apparently player numbers were not great but in 1906 interest seemed to have revived and the black and reds planned to join the Gisborne District Association.

The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter described the opening annual meeting of a new club at the Inverness Hotel on page 2 of its 22-5-1915 issue. I stated earlier that footy seemed to galvanise communities in times of depression as a way to brighten life a bit and W.W.1 was every bit as depressing as the financial hardships of the 1890's and 1930's. This was the Oaklands, Broadmeadows and Bulla Football Club which played at the Oaklands ground opposite the Inverness Hotel. This hotel was at the north end of the north-south runway in Melbourne Airport and the ground would have been across Bulla Rd on the hotel's 58 acres (Melway 177 G 11 approximately.)

I will use this journal to tell you a bit about some of those who attended the meeting.All locations are from Melway. Unfortunately I know nothing of the President, Dr Brown. The vice-presidents were Alex McCracken Jnr (North Park, 28 J1, and Cumberland, 178 C12)and H.H.Daniel (Narbonne, 177 K4).The patrons were Alex McCracken (V.F.L. President from its formation, almost until his death shortly after this meeting); Alister Clark (Glenara, bounded by Deep Creek, Bulla Rd, the Inverness and roughly Perimeter Road just north of the east-west runway; famous rose breeder and soon to become chairman of the Moonee Valley Racing Club), W.D.Peter (not Peters as in the paper, who at various times owned properties such as Chandos , bounded by the south east end of Freight Rd, Derby St, Wright St, Moonee Ponds Creek and Mickleham Rd, and Overpostle, 3 G-K east to Deep Ck and south to Jacksons Ck); D.Brannigan (probably still "St John's Hill" accessed via St John's Rd, 384 G-J5 and 800 metres approximately to the north;member of a famed equestrian family); Maurice Quinlan (see the Quinlan journal); and A.F.Ozanne M.H.R. (I've only seen this name once in the area, as grantee, with James McConnell, of the land bisected by Puckle St, Moonee Ponds); Alec. Forbes (descendant of a pioneer 6 miles from Melbourne near Broadmeadows in 1850?); H.C.Gibb (Husband? of Eleanor Gibb who ran the Inverness Hotel and later the Essendon Hotel, now the Grand, south of Woodland Park as seen in "The Stopover That Stayed"); Islip; Fitzgerald, Robert Ralston; Archie Campbell; Keith McNeill (all Oaklands); Thomas Kingshott (Broadmeadows 6 A6), M.Hoctor (Broad St? Broadmeadows where Jack Hoctor was born but possibly on a farm such as Rocklaw ); John Lane (Gowrie Park, west of the terminal building to McNabs Rd and used as a landing field in early days; about 4 Lane boys fought in W.W.1); John and James Gilligan (whose deaths are related in the Horse journal and properties in the Reddan journal);Lawlor, Hartney (both Bulla); Phillip Hill (Danby Farm 5B3); Semmell (Essendon), Walsh (Broadmeadows), Jock West (descendant of one of two pioneering blacksmithing brothers just south of the Bulla/ Keilor Rd junction at North Essendon whose biographies appear in "Victoria and its Metropolis"); Frank Wright (Strathconnan, as for Chandos but not quite as far north as the Western Ave ,or Lockhart's, corner.)

Itellya is researching local history on the Mornington Peninsula and is willing to help family historians with information about the area between Somerville and Blairgowrie. He has extensive information about Henry Gomm of Somerville, Joseph Porta (Victoria's first bellows manufacturer) and Captain Adams of Rosebud.

I'm relying on memory here but I think Harry Peck, son of John Murray Peck who was surely the first Yank to be an official in the first senior football body, the Victorian Football Association, said that his father always wore a Sturt desert pea to games. J.M.Peck was Essendon's Vice President and lived at Mascoma, across Mt Alexander Rd from Robert McCracken's Ailsa where the Same Old played its first games near Filson St.I'm not sure whether Harry said he wore the blossom because of Essendon's colours or that the sprig influenced the choice of black and red.
(MEMOIRS OF A STOCKMAN by Harry Peck.)

It is possible that the junior Essendon team that Keilor played in 1894 was North Park, one of the many organisations that Alex McCracken helped to establish, and obviously named after his mansion on the south side of Woodlands St that is now the Columban Mission.